Cho Cho San, Sydney review

Author: Pat Nourse
Photography: Rob Shaw

Can a restaurant be run by no one with any experience cooking
Japanese food, set in a not particularly Japanese-looking room,
served by not particularly Japanese-looking people, with flavours
that can't really, truly be said to be authentically Japanese still
be called a Japanese restaurant? More to the point, could it be any
good? Working backwards, the answers to those questions, if we take
Cho Cho San as our example, are, "Yes. In fact, it's really bloody
good," and "Maybe, maybe not, but does it really matter? Hand me
one of those lamb cutlets."

The not-Japanese restaurant people involved are restaurateur Sam
Christie, best known for Longrain (a Thai restaurant) and The Apollo (a
Greek restaurant) and Jonathan Barthelmess, late of Manly Pavilion
(an Italian restaurant) and Coast (an Italian restaurant), and
still chef at The Apollo. Nic Wong, who does Cho Cho San's cooking
day to day, is formerly of Ester (a modern Australian restaurant)
and Billy
Kwong (a Cantonese restaurant). Its design was by the talented
George Livissianis, whose recent work includes Café Paci (a
Finnish-Mexican restaurant, sort of), Jac & Jack (an Australian
clothier), The Apollo and the recent refit at Longrain. The
restaurant's name comes from the lead character in Madame
Butterfly, a short story by John Luther Long (an American
lawyer and writer), perhaps best known as Madama
Butterfly, the opera adapted by Puccini (an Italian composer).
In other words, let's check the idea of pedigree at the door.

Just as the Impressionists lifted things like bold new approaches
to subject matter and composition from Japan in their heyday, so
too do our heroes take a bowerbird approach in their work,
seemingly intent more on capturing the essence of their subject for
maximum effect than its details. The menu is written in bold
strokes, very like The Apollo, only with its list of share plates
rendered in a bright impasto of miso, ponzu, green tea and yuzu in
place of oregano, oil and olives. There's even the same
feed-me-style chef's menu, a steal in any language at $65 a
head.

Christie and Barthelmess like the idea of the restaurant having
something of an izakaya vibe, so the booze offer is more nuanced
and substantial than up the road. The long, narrow space is given
over as much to bar seating as tables (the bar is where it's at),
so it makes a lot of sense. Sake gets a full page, and sake-lovers
and novices alike are well served by Steve Darazs, a smooth
operator on the floor whose nihonshu knowledge distinguished him at
Izakaya Fujiyama. Beers are excellent, covering both the mainstream
(monster cans of Kirin and Sapporo), and the small and interesting
(Robot Ninja on tap, Hitachino Nest stout in the bottle).
Christie's flair for giving cocktails kooky names hasn't deserted
him (the Nippy Rockshop is a successfully sake-fuelled twist on the
Negroni), and his wine list is dangerously drinkable. It leans
mostly and sensibly white and light, with familiar European names
such as JJ Prüm riesling, Christophe et Fils Chablis and Tempier
Bandol interspersed among savvy local choices along the lines of
Chalmers vermentino, BK savagnin, Luke Lambert chardonnay and Bill
Downie's pinot noir. It's equally suited to the
Tuesday-night-fried-chicken hit with a tinnie as it is to the
let's-get-everything-on-the-menu-bugger-the-expense splurge.

So about that fried chicken. Its secret ingredient is rice bubbles
in the batter. Crunchy. Clever. It's so moreish with its spicy mayo
accompaniment that it oughta be against the law to sell it without
a beer on the side. If you were to come in just for a drink
(somehow edging out the committed diners who have packed the place
since the day the doors swung open) you could graze very happily on
the chicken, a plate of pickled cucumber, the nasu dengaku-inspired
eggplant and miso dip, and the excellent buns, a Momofuku-ish
steamed one with smoked duck, and a toasted mayonnaisey one with
spanner crab, chips and chives.

The room confirms George Livissianis as an interior designer of
note. It's almost as stripped-back as The Apollo, but almost
everything is painted white. There's not a waving cat, stand of
bamboo or scrap of lacquerware to be seen. The tops of the walls
are punched with circular holes, while the menu is rendered in an
all-caps face that recalls The Matrix. One of the few
overt concessions to the Japanese theme is an oversized paper
lantern by the pass on a stack of red plastic Sapporo crates. The
room is noisy, there are always people pushing for walk-ins (about
a third of the seats are available for reservations; otherwise plan
to come early or late) and the soundtrack swings from The
Avalanches' "Frontier Psychiatrist" to vintage Peter Gabriel. In a
good way. There's fine detail in the lovely ceramic wares, the
proper double-ended chopsticks, and the eminently stealable heavy
brass chopstick-rests. The overall effect is more Kill
Bill than Hello Kitty, Osaka-hip rather than Kyoto-tranquil.
And Potts Point is lapping it up.

"Do you pay George less because his work is so minimal?" I asked
Christie as he worked the room one evening. "No," he said, "we have
to pay him more." It's money well spent.

I wouldn't say the same about an order of the yakitori. Maybe
it's the unmet expectation of smoky meat on a stick that the name
conjures, but the breaded-looking chicken strips that come to
the table with an almost chemical-tasting pickled lime
accompaniment just don't do it for me. Apart from maybe the beans
with miso (a bit one-dimensional), the yakitori is perhaps the only
one of the 27 dishes (from a possible 30) I've tried that I
wouldn't order again.

The desserts are good rather than great, and tend towards the
sugary. Ginger custard has a fabulous lushness, its texture
sublime, but the sweetness is off the chart, where something more
like a gingery Japonaise-leaning take on the bitter caramel and
Sauternes custard at Marque would have been sensational. Go the
cute green tea soft-serve in a waffle cone, or the perfectly
comforting steamed, yuzu-lifted take on the classic semolina citrus
pudding instead. It's a pretty impressive strike rate, especially
for so new a restaurant.

Everything I've had from the raw section has been excellent, most
notably the slices of highly marbled beef rib laid over wild rices
steamed (nutty) and puffed (crunchy), and diced cucumber, made
electric by a brown butter, soy and ginger dressing. The sides can
almost be considered meals in themselves, especially the hearty,
chilli-rich udon with minced pork
(Christie takes his with a fried egg on top) and brown rice with an
egg and shiitakes through it. "Miso cod", a fillet of buttery white
flakes of sablefish tender under a dark, sweet miso glaze, takes
the Japanese home-cook favourite popularised by Nobu to elegant
heights.

I'm among those confounded by the Japanese take on curry, and
normally react with a mixture of revulsion and perplexity. The
version Wong and Barthelmess have created, though, where it's
turned into a sauce for mud crab (sold thoughtfully in whole or
half portions), is neither perplexing nor revolting. Far from it,
in fact. Could it be that it leans a bit more Malaysian or Sri
Lankan in its spicing than the sweet turmeric-heavy example you'd
find in an ANA business-class lounge? Whatever the case, it
works.

"In painting you must give the idea of the true by means of the
false," Degas once said. In creating their restaurant the Cho Cho
San team has ignored the rules and relied on their own sense of
what's good and what's going to work instead of relying on
tradition. For three Greeks and a Chinese-Vietnamese guy opening a
Japanese restaurant, it seems like the smarter move. They've come
up with something spontaneous-seeming and energetic, a
neighbourhood restaurant worth going out of your way for. It
doesn't taste just like the real thing, perhaps, but it tastes
good. The value is strong, the atmosphere magnetic. You'd best bet
they'd love it in Japan.